US Mobile Market Update Q3 2013

Data is now 48 per cent of the US mobile industry service revenues - let's call it half.

For the year 2013, Chetan Sharma is expecting $90 billion in mobile data service revenues for the US market making it the number one market in mobile data revenues ahead of Japan and China.

For the quarter, the market added 2.2M new connections, a strong reversal from the paltry 139K of last quarter. T-Mobile continued to impress after its strong reversal in industry metrics last quarter on the back of a series of marketing and pricing initiatives that seem to be gaining traction and having an impact on its image and fortune.

Smartphones are now past the 64 per cent mark in the US and continue to sell at a brisk pace accounting for almost 90 per cent of the devices sold in Q3 2013. Apple led the smartphone sales amongst the top 4 operators with 42 per cent share for the quarter. While the US penetration of smartphones is 64 per cent, the 64 per cent of the sub base is concentrated in only 40 per cent of the households thus leaving plenty of growth in the marketplace, he claims.